Jeff Skalski Interview at UO Forums – Part 1

Go read Part 1 of the Interview at UO Forums.

Now.

Then come back here and read my take on it. I know I wasn’t going to do much soapboxing here, and was going to leave that for the old UO Journal, but I do have to comment on a few things.

My Take
It was a great interview, and some of the answers were a lot more clear than we’ve had in the past. Congratulations to UO Forums for pinning Jeff down on some answers and thank you to Jeff for showing a willingness to answer them. I do have a few comments about Jeff’s answers.

One Client
Jeff Skalski on what one thing he would undo if he could:
I don’t want this to be miss understood, but honestly I would go back and not release the EC……I just have to wonder how that effort could have been spent if only one client existed. (for the full quote, see the interview at UO Forums)

I agree with this. Don’t be surprised about me agreeing. We’re on a third “new” client and graphics set in addition to the original “Classic Client” – Third Dawn/3D, Kingdom Reborn, and now Enhanced Client. Yes, the EC and the KR clients have the same underlying engine, but they have different graphics.

My view, is that they should have finished and properly supported a new “modern” client long ago, and I mean finish – full graphics, solid interface, a lot more bug free than the 3D, KR, and EC clients. Roll out that client, announce the classic client has a year to go, and go from there.

I know some of you will get angry with me over that, and talk about the legacy of UO, but let me quote Wikipedia about OSI and Origina’s legacy:
Origin’s motto was “We Create Worlds” and its games were known for their well-realized plots and the amount of detail furnished. OSI was always ahead of the curve in terms of cutting edge graphics and game versatility.

Let me bring up something else: A major source for a lot of complaints people have these days really boil down to a lack of players. Those lack of players leads to a lack of development resources (money) for UO which leads to a lack of things like expansions and our own community relations, which then leads back to even fewer players.

Spoiler Alert! The Classic Client isn’t going to bring in enough people to keep UO going through the 20th Anniversary. The Classic Client is not populating our shards with thousands of new players every month.

Official Forums
When asked about why UO and DAOC (Dark Age of Camelot) are kept off of the official BioWare Social Network site (BioWare forums) while every other BioWare game, back to its MSDOS days, has official forums, Jeff had this to say: UO has a thriving community on Stratic’s and other support sites such as UOForums, and rather than compete with it, we’d rather support it.

I have to disagree with that. There are all kinds of rumors about why UO and DAOC are barred from being an official part of BioWare’s community – deals with some fansites, etc., but you know what? I don’t care about any of the rumors, about any of the previous history, about any deals that may or may not be in place with fansites, or about why EA has deliberately tried to keep UO and DAOC communities down and away from official EA websites.

That’s nice that you want to make the fansites feel special, but guess what? I just don’t care about anything that was ever said or agreed to or done prior to 2012.

What I care about is that it illustrates a definite lack of support for those games, and it gives a really bad impression to first-time UO players. Going back to what I said earlier, new players should be your focus. Unless the fansites are helping to create thousands of new players out of thin air, you need to be worrying about new players.

A new players shows up at either the UO Herald or at BioWare. If they show up at BioWare, UO does not exist except for a single link in a menu that takes them to the Herald. At neither place will they find official forums or consistent official communication from the developers. The UO website – strike 1, the design is crap. No official forums or consistent communication from the developers – strike 2.

There maybe deals with some UO fansites to keep official forums from happening, I seriously doubt any of them can afford it though, but it does nothing for new players at all. MMORPG players these days have a certain level of expectations, and players showing up from other MMORPGs are not going to have those expectations met.

Other Things We Learned
Virtues are being worked on. Dungeon revamps are being worked on. Clean Up Britannia is permanent. Players will finally get their wish and be able to buy garden beds (just garden beds) from the Origin store. We may even get a Fan Faire for the 15th Anniversary. F2P is not right for UO and would require a lot of effort.